Baseball cracks down on cheats
were released from their Braves contracts, free to sign elsewhere. The Braves also lost future international bonus money and face additional signing restrictions.
This isn’t the first time. In 2016, MLB took away five prospects from the Boston Red Sox and banned the Sox from signing any players during the 2016-17 signing period, which ran from July 2 to June 15 (international players who are 16, or will be by Sept. 1, can sign beginning July 2, but teams reach agreements with players months and sometimes years before then. Payoffs and cheating have been rampant for years in the international market).
Former St. Louis Cardinals scouting director Chris Correa received a lifetime ban for hacking into the Houston Astros’ computer database. The Cardinals paid a $2 million fine, the largest allowed by the MLB constitution, and lost two draft picks.
And the malfeasance reached the Pirates. The club did not renew the contract of former director of Latin American scouting Rene Gayo after an MLB investigation revealed financial improprieties, including but not necessarily limited to a kickback from a Mexican League team.
The Pirates hired Junior Vizcaino to serve as their director of international scouting, replacing Gayo.
“I know that with Junior, with the adjustments we’re making staffing, we anticipate continuing to operate the right way,” Huntington said. “Obviously with the reason for the change, we got short-changed in our process, but we anticipate continuing to operate ethically internationally.”
Vizcaino, a native of the Dominican Republic, was drafted by the Pirates in the 14th round in 1987. He played four years in the minor leagues, with a brief stint as a two-way player.
“Most scouts have strengths on one side or the other, and then they try to develop the other side, and Junior’s experience both as a pitcher and as a hitter gives him a unique background to be able to feel how it all comes together,” Huntington said.
Vizcaino started scouting for the Braves in 1994 and spent 17 years with the Kansas City Royals, 10 of them as a national supervisor. He worked for the Red Sox in 2017 as a global crosschecker.
“[He] brings the structure from the draft, brings bicultural, bilingual, the ability to connect with so many different people, brings a vast level of experience to the position, and again, a guy with a teacher’s heart that’s going to help our staff develop but most importantly get us to the right players and help us acquire the right players,” Huntington said.
The Braves saga reached its conclusion right as the battle for Japanese twoway star Shohei Ohtani intensified, and Ohtani provides Manfred another opportunity to reinforce the new expectations. Ohtani falls under a different set of rules because of a posting agreement between MLB and Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, but Attachment 46 of the collective bargaining agreement, which bans circumvention of the rules, still applies. Last week, ESPN, citing anonymous team executives, reported that clubs were bracing for an MLB investigation into Ohtani’s signing process regardless of where he went. Ohtani signed with the Los Angeles Angels.